Pirates And Plunder

The Travellers are leaving the world of Iirkkhu, and heading to Medishvlaas. It’s a two parsec jump, so my guess was that they’d head to the gas giant at Medishvlaas to refuel for free before heading on to the main world. Out beyond the safety of the Imperium, gas giants aren’t always the safest of places. At a system such as Medishvlaas, where the world is locked in a war with itself, there’s nobody to patrol the system and keep pirates at bay.

So I figured it would be a good place to have a pirate encounter. Nothing serious, just something to give a hint about the risk of piracy away from the main world, and make the Travellers back off from the gas giant and head away. The pirates wouldn’t have enough superiority to want to force a fight, so the actual chance of a shooting engagement would be slim.

The players finished off their trading at Iirkkhu, and bought some personal equipment (some more grenades on the part of Gan). Then they plotted course for the gas giant at Iirkkhu.

During the trip, Dmitri spent the time relaxing in order to get some Luck back, whilst the others could spend the time in study in training. Seven days later, they came out of jump.

Ahead of them was a gas giant, but their sensors also picked up some spacecraft. A scout and an Empress Marava class free trader were in orbit. The Empress was close to a Free Trader which was in a pretty poor condition. The scout made an active scan of the Travellers ship, but the local ships had their transponders inactive. The two ships were armed, and the Free Trader was powered down and holed.

They were very probably pirates, still pulling apart a recent kill. So the Travellers did the sensible thing – pointed towards the pirates and engaged full thrust. As they came within range, they opened up with both turrets with their twin pulse lasers.

This was not at all what I’d expected. After spending years expecting players to get into combat, and having them back off, I was completely taken off guard that they were actually initiating a combat, Especially a space combat, where things can quite quickly go very wrong.

As it was, they got lucky. After Irian made a declaration of “be somewhere else, we’re the navy”, they aimed at the Marava, which was connected to the wreck so unable to manoeuvre. They got a bridge strike and a weapon strike, taking out its turret. The scout started accelerating forward and fired back, missing.

Part of the issue was that I hadn’t really set anything up for combat. The two pirate ships (and they were pirate ships) weren’t properly crewed, so skills weren’t quite set right. By turn two, the Scout was able to fire back and get a hit, doing damage to the Big S. I also had to pull down the rules to remember how things worked. I was really completely unprepared for this.

After a few turns, both the Marava and Scout turned to flee. After some very good shots by Gan and Dmitri, the Marava was badly damaged, and the Scout wasn’t in great health either. The Marava surrendered, and the Scout made a run for it – eventually getting away safely.

The Travellers now had a problem though. They had one wreck, plus a pirate ship full of pirates that had just surrendered to them. How were they going to actually take the pirate ship without getting killed in a boarding action?

I now had a problem as well – who were the crew, and how would they react to being boarded? This is where Gemini comes in useful. It can generate a crew for a couple of ships pretty quickly, not just names but a list of skills, background and personality for the NPCs which I can then tailor to what I want. I do have a random NPC generator built into Foundry, though it’s aimed at generating passengers. Maybe I should create some roll tables for ship crews. That would allow me to populate a spacecraft pretty quickly, and attach crew roles to people ready for a combat encounter. Maybe something to look at this weekend.

So, what would a group of pirates do after surrendering? The Frontier class Lab Ship is a non-standard design, so not particularly common. The Pirates probably don’t know exactly how many people are aboard, or how well equipped they are. But something that looked like a science vessel, with enough space to have several dozen crew members, has turned out to be well armed and armoured. So they’re going to be cautious.

The pirate captain was relatively calm and preferred to avoid fighting where possible – it isn’t good for business. So her plan was to surrender peacefully, and plan for some possible dealing afterwards. They had some hostages, to try and ensure they don’t just get shot on sight.

Gan and Dmitry went over in their pinnace Nameless, and with Dmitry leading the way in boarding armour, ensured that Captain Vance kept to her plan and the pirates were well behaved. Two of them claimed to be hostages, but the Travellers had everyone strip and tied them up just to be sure.

Gan went across to the wreck of the free trader, and checked over the ship’s computer. He found a crew roster, which included the two who claimed not to be pirates. There was also a dead captain, and another corpse though no mention of who that was in the ship’s computer.

The cargo hold was mostly empty apart from wreckage of some destroyed cargo. The ship had lots of holes (down to 5 hull points), and was suffering from lots of critical damage. But once powered back it, it could possibly still fly.

Nya and Dax, the two survivors, were untied and allowed to dress. They explained that they had jumped into the system to deliver some cargo to the world, when they were jumped by pirates whilst trying to refuel. They just had ore and spices.

Checking the pirate vessel, there were crates of ore and spices in the hold, and the ship’s computer was in the process of rebooting after a hard reset. The transponder would still be valid, but navigation logs and crew details were wiped from the main computer system. Whilst the transponder also has some basic travel logs, they can only be accessed with the right access codes – which the Travellers won’t have.

Since the player for Nashu wasn’t around this week, we assumed that she was recording everything that was happening on video, including the exploration of the two ships.

There is much discussion about the legal situation. What happens to pirates? They are tried and shot. What about their ships? Can the Travellers just take the ship and cargo as their own now? The cargo was stolen, so that belongs to (what is left of) the Future Profits and her surviving crew. And possibly the bank.

The pirate ship though is more complicated. Within the Imperium, it would probably be confiscated by the Imperium Navy. But they aren’t in the Imperium. The local world doesn’t have the ability to enforce anything beyond it’s own atmosphere, and there’s nobody around to really take ownership.

The pirates are taken to the Big Sphincter, where the players discuss renaming their ship now that the player who originally named it has dropped out. His character is still the captain and owner, but it’s really up to the players, not the characters.

They have enough staterooms to lock the pirates into. The captain tells Irian to not assume that the victims were squeaky clean, and that she’s happy to talk about their cargo. She suggests that the Travellers check for themselves first though.

Checking the cargo a bit more closely, shows that that the containers of metallic ore are hiding crates of a different nature. Weapons. Short range missiles, laser weapons, high tech goods that a nation at war would be very keen to get their hands on. It takes a bit more effort to find illegal drugs hidden amongst the spices – mostly combat drugs with dangerous side effects.

They aren’t really permitted to search the Future Profits, but Dmitry doesn’t care about that and checks the Captain’s cabin. There’s a holo portrait of a woman, some spare vacc suits and books and tablets, as well as a safe. The safe has a bio lock and pin entry. So Dmitry goes to find the body of the Captain, and brings him back, placing his eye up against the sensor. With some fiddling (and a good Medic check), the iris scan is passed.

But what about the PIN? Checking the holo portrait, there’s a name and birth and death date on it. A short while later, the safe is open.

Inside are some credits, papers (actual paper with pen and ink and everything) and data tablets. The papers include a diary and details on the ship crew. It looks like Dax Miller may have had a bit of a shady past as a smuggler, and Nya Lin was running away from something.

The diary mentions taking goods to the nation of Ket for selling to the government there. The other main nations on this world are Kingston (where the main starport is) and The Symphony, which is a religious dictatorship. The Travellers have instructions to deliver some military hardware of their own to Ket, so this fits in nicely with their plans.

As it happens, I thought they were delivering to Kingston, so chose Ket for where the smuggled goods were going. The problem with giving players handouts is that they get to check my notes. So there won’t be as much of a conflict as there could have been, but that’s fine.

So next up the Travellers need to decide that to do with the Pirates, and how to handle the sale of the goods they’ve liberated from the pirates.

I’ve got to figure out what was going on, and where the Pirates are from and what they can offer to avoid execution.

This was absolutely not what I was expecting for this session, but it was a lot of fun to have to make things up on short notice, and the players seemed to really enjoy it as well.

Next session we can see where things go.